Arthur ZangA new kind of heart tablet

IT specialist Arthur Zang has used his technological know-how to invent and manufacture Africa’s first computer tablet to diagnose people with heart disease.

locationCameroon

Arthur Zang’s Cardio Pad puts him at the forefront of young African innovators – and has won him plaudits and prizes in his home country and as far away as the United States (where Forbes magazine described him as “an example of African innovation at its finest”), as well as the Royal Academy of Engineering in London.

Today Cameroon, tomorrow the whole African continent.

The Cardio Pad went on sale in January 2016, with the potential to enable heart examinations across Cameroon, a sprawling country of 22 million citizens and only 50 cardiologists, almost all based in the two main cities.

The electronic device gives health workers the ability to check a patient’s heart and, within minutes, transmit a digitized electrocardiogram – using a mobile phone connection – to a distant cardiologist for diagnosis.

Designed by Zang, who consulted a cardiologist at a hospital in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital, it was then manufactured in China. Zang has so far produced 300 devices, 20 of which were sold in the first week. The inventor’s immediate goal is for more than 100 hospitals to use the device.

In a new project, Zang has recently started work on a factory in Yaoundé to manufacture smart cards.

2,400

Estimated number of physicians in Cameroon, of which only 50 are cardiologists

55/57

Male/female life expectancy in Cameroon

12

Number of sensors on a Cardio Pad, in order to provide a thorough diagnosis

7

Hours of battery life, which make the Cardio Pad suitable for use in remote rural regions with no reliable access to electricity

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